Wireless communication systems and networks are used in connection with many applications, including, for example, satellite communications systems, portable digital assistants (PDAs), laptop computers, portable communication devices (e.g., cellular telephones), nodes that change their point of attachment to a network, and non-mobile network nodes. The term Access Terminal (AT) can be used to refer to such applications. The AT may be, for example, a device itself, or alternatively, software running on an appropriate system. A correspondent node (CN) is a node that sends or receives packets to an AT. A CN can simply be a second AT that is in communication with a first AT. A connection between an AT and a CN, through a network, can have a quality of service (QoS) associated with it. QoS is a measure of the service quality provided to an application. More specifically, QoS is a measure of the service quality provided to a connection between an AT and a CN, through a network. In the Internet protocol (IP) environment, this relates to the possible levels of quality of an IP flow, including, for example, bandwidth guarantees, latency, packet ordering, and other related levels of service. Specifically, when an IP flow is granted a certain level of QoS, this signifies that the network will guarantee that packets in the flow receive specific minimum levels of service. An IP flow that is not granted any level of QoS is not guaranteed any minimal level of service and instead the network provides only its best effort.
Providing QoS to an IP flow requires a certain amount of network resources. As networks do not have unlimited resources, every IP flow cannot necessarily obtain the QoS it desires, or even obtain any minimum level of QoS. For the transfer of a single image file, for example, having a lower level of QoS than desired may simply mean that the file is correctly transferred but that the transfer takes longer than the user would prefer. More severely, for example, if an IP Flow for streaming video is not granted its required level of QoS, this may mean that the user cannot use the streaming video at all. Conversely, it is possible that an IP flow might have a higher level of QoS than it requires. A situation like this wastes system resources and may limit the availability of connections in the network to services that require that higher level of QoS.